Dr. Luc (Luke) van Loon

So those may all change the requirements.

But I think one of the things that we always lose perspective of is what is requirement?

What is required for optimal health?

And that's, of course, depends on what you're used to.

I mean, there's no studies that have done it as far as I know, but if you actually have a protein intake lower than 0.8, would you disappear?

I don't think so.

There's people that actually survive on much lesser protein, and so they can regain a certain balance.

But also people that overconsume protein can regain a balance, so the body adapts.

If we weren't able to adapt, we wouldn't be alive today, right?

Very, very good question.

When I start talking about something it's almost in 99.9% it's about muscle.

And also a lot of your viewers will discuss muscle.

But of course the body consists of all these different tissues.

And if I tell somebody that his arm or his muscle is actually reconditioned completely in two to three months, people are amazed.

But then if you start looking at all the other tissues,

you'll get even more amazed.

And so we started doing that, looking at turnover of other organs.

Now, you can't stick a needle in the liver and in the pancreas and in the brain, just like we do in muscle in order to measure turnover.

But we actually do this prior to surgery.

So over the last few years, we've actually put tracers, stable isotope labeled amino acid tracers, in the body and then measured the turnover rate of all the other tissues